of rich democracies that extended a little bit beyond that since then, so, you know, all of europe, canada, australia, japan, very, very few of these countries have experienced -- a lot of them have seen some increase in inequality, though some of them have seen none at all, probably because government has pushed back against some of the economic trends rather than reinforcing them, which is what happened here. host: how do you compare the united states to a country like germany, where they've looked like they're coming out of this recession ok, but they haven't -- they rely heavily on exports. they're not importing a lot. their consumers are not buying a lot, which many say is not an economic -- you can't keep doing that, and that they also -- they have a steer measures, austerity measures that they've put in place, but you can't compare germany to the united states because germany didn't have a housing bubble. and so perhaps it is our economic times. guest: well, again, i agree with you. every country is different. but it's not just germany. you can run down the list. and there's informa